I joined Elsevier as an Editor for Surface and Coatings Technology in
January this year and so I am relatively new to the EES system, at
least from the Editor perspective.

I have been a member of the Editorial Board since 1987 and also a
reviewer for several other Elsevier journals, so have had some exposure
to the system. Having now been in the deep end of the pool for two
months I am still on a learning curve but maybe some early impressions
and experience may be of interest to others starting out as Editors.

Elsevier provides an excellent on-line introduction to the EES
system, which Editors can try at their leisure and familiarize
themselves with the aspects that are new to them. The real-time training
is invaluable and I would say critical in getting up to speed. There is
quite a lot of information to absorb first up and it is necessarily
hypothetical, of course, until you are actually working in the EES
system for real. I had a second session using my actual Editor’s work
list and practised on real cases, which then closed the loop on many
questions that I had.

The main task essentially reduces to finding appropriate reviewers,
of course, and this can be a little daunting for the first time.
However, the Scopus system is excellent and my experiences with the
searching process to date have been very positive. The system as it
works for SCT has some foibles though. For example, if a potential
reviewer is identified and emailed with the standard automated
invitation there is no guarantee that the email address is still valid.
By the time you find out that it isn’t, at least five days have been
lost. Apart from this issue, which I understand from the EES support
office is an internal setting at the journal end, the system works
extraordinarily well. Reviewers that decline are generally very helpful
and suggest alternatives although one did suggest the actual author?
When the numbers start to build errors can occur and I have invited an
author to review their own paper on one occasion also!

It has been a rewarding experience to date and a great insight into
the other side of the fence for a publishing scientist. The main
message I would like to convey to my colleagues in the scientific
community is the importance of participating in the reviewing process
for scientific journals in order to maintain the high standards we all
expect for published scientific literature.